I read a lot of manga. The thing is I’ve been reading manga for a good few years really, well before the recent explosion. Even this girl who was trying to be all cool and had the audacity to call me a geek had a pile of Tuxedo Gin piled next her bed, I couldn’t believe the cheek, ANYWAY I’m loosing the point, the point is that every once in a while a series comes along that takes my mind completely. In recent months that has been Planetes.

So far this series has gotten 3 books from tokyopop and they are all worth every single penny(euro or dollar cent if you want) you pay for them. The characters are exceptionally well put together and it’s all about space in as realistic a fashion as you could get it. No crazy spaceships, just ‘hard science’. As you can see from this site,just manga , there are another 2 more books coming out in November 2004 and February 2005.

The big news is that it’s also been released as an animated series. The info can be found on the icv2 website. It says there are 23 episodes that are going to be released, wonder how many books ultimately will be released and how close the anime is the actual manga?

I have to say that sometimes my mind operates at a much faster rate than my bloggin technique, and manytimes I wish I could download my thoughts directly as they happened, from my mind the instant I think about them and onto the net, that would cause for a lot of noise, but then again the net is filled with noise. I suppose that’s evolution 100 of the natural blogger where his thoughts are brought directly into play from his mind.

Wordpress allows you to post messages by sending an e-mail to an address only you know about. It takes these e-mails and posts them directly on the website, personally I think this is genius if you’re a mobile writer that earns a living as a writer and like to have ideas posted directly .This is the closest you’ll get to have instant bloggin systems at the moment. I believe a similar system is used by Warren Ellis, although I will say this, Warren’s sites usually are on the cutting edge of the internet backbone. He generally pushes the boudaries whenever he can, and is a leader in my eyes of using the web when no one knew how to. The issue however is that Warren has fallen behind. He’s still using 2.66 Moveable Type, and his site is as attractive as a monkey’s ass.

He’s had better, not by much. Also his proper website is pretty poor and never gets updated.

I once read a perfect analogy of the net in it’s early days. Basically think of the net as one big party, where every person has the same level of noise. Microsoft is just as easy to get to as brokenkode, it’s all in a name, they occupy the same space.

I’ve had one hell of a week, it’s been ridiculous at work the last few days, mainly because I’ve been involved with an international architecture competition. This is for the British part of the Antarctic section. It’s basically a call to getting a better designed station for their scientific base in the South pole. So I, without really thinking said that I’d help my buddy on this little lottery ticket of a competition. We’re estimating around 500 plus submissions to this competition will be put forward.

Site TweakSo the weekend and yesterday has been spent exclusively on this report, which explains the lack of blogging time and site tweaks, so in the first day since I’ve finished the site has been tweaked ever so slightly.

I’d like to thank David from Davidblog who gave me the idea to have the small touch at the comments you see below. I’ve also updated the formatting of the Broken Stats section.

WeatherI don’t think I’ve ever been soo drenched in my entire life. We are talking unbelievable amounts of water being chucked down. I was stuck at the tube station for at least 30 minutes, then I got bored and decided to venture out, and that was a pretty bad move, and I knew it as well, but to be honest I couldn’t be bothered with the entire situation of waiting like a muppet, and so I didn’t. Wet to the BONE; live and learn I guess.

It’s been a bit crazy the last couple of weeks for me. I’m going back to Greece for the Olympics, so work is pretty hectic to try and actually get as much done before I disappear for a while.

A few points of how the Island(UK) is different to the continent(the rest of the world):

Point 1:Even in this state though I’ve had a few decent nights out, however I can definitely say that I’ll be glad to get back into the mediteranean way of life for these 3 coming weeks. It’s a different kettle of fish over there. England effectively shuts down to it’s bare minimum after 11 o’clock. Oh sure there are places open after that, but they’re not generally where I’d like to be.

There is something to be said about going about when you feel like, and not having any hassle getting back at night, and just enjoying yourself, at your own pace.

Point 2:Why do all the weirdos (except for me of course) have to get onto the god damn nightbus? I’m serious every single idiot gets onto the bus and has to act like a complete idiot, and the decibel levels inside a nightbus are ridiculous. I’m really starting to consider never bothering with nightbuses unless the situation is exceptionally dire really.

Point 3:How many drunk burnouts can you spot in one day? I’ve counted 4. These are people that have completely and utterly given up on life and only experience life through a bottle. Sad really.

Not really sure about this movie. I know the hype around this one has begun, and there are loads of reports about it being pretty poor where story is concerned, and that this is more a Will Smith type affair than an Alex Proyas type movie. Alex Proyas for those in the dark is the supremely talented man behind the original Crow and Dark City. Since those two movies I actually haven’t seen him do anything. I guess this is coming back with a vengance really bringing in a blockbuster of sorts, but I’ve got to say that something about getting Will in there does actually reduce the credebility for me. Call me crazy but I would have loved it more if another unknown actor was put in there instead.

I guess I’ll have to wait and pass judgement when I’ve actually seen the thing. Could be good, could be rubbish, I’m still on the fence about this one, even though I really should be clamouring to watch it.

Hahahahahaha. I’m in love with my site at the moment. It’s been a complete labour of love but I’ve finally got it to the stage that I had in my mind at the very beginning when I began this crazy Wordpress adventure.

The icing on the cake is the ‘Broken Stats’ section which you can find in the control panel. Click on Auspices at the top there and you’ll be transported to the bottom. It’s a small addition but it marks the end of what I had in mind for the site from the begining. I’m probably going to start a sticky post and keep adding to it, which will be the nexus section as I think updating that manually is such a waste of time.

The good news is now I just have a few bits and pieces and cleaning of the code before all is sorted and I can fully concentrate on something else right now. Damn that feels amazing.

Lacuna Coil Official Website

Lacuna Coil, fantastic band from deepest Italy, very gothic, very melodic and very in your face. I really love women singers in rock bands, always have, and if they look any good, that’s just a bonus.

New ‘Star Wars’ movie title revealed

CNN.com - New ‘Star Wars’ movie title revealed - Jul 25, 2004Out of complete boredom I actually typed in cnn.com and there it was in full glory the actual name of the new Star Wars movie : Episode Three.

Star Wars - Episode III : Revenge of the Sith

I really like it, let’s just hope that the movie is going to actually be worth anything, I’m not scared of the overall look of the movie, I’m just scared friggin George will screw the story and dialogue up once more.

Warren EllisLike I said only information that would make me excited and books I’d buy in the future. Well I generally like Warren Ellis’s work, as an internet personality the guy can come off as a complete nob, but then I’ve never met the man, only read what he says online and in interviews, and well the man does sound like a nob. In the past few years I’ve bought quite a few of his projects, not all of them mind you, but a decent amount of them. some of the ones I’ve used are:

Transmetropolitan
Planetary
Orbiter
Come In Alone
Stormwatch
Authority
Atmosphere

Now he’s done a few things that I would like to pick up like Global Frequency, and RED. His Avatar press stuff just looks pretty poor. That style of book really doesn’t do much for me. After picking up Atmosphere, which is about alien abduction I thought no, unless the actual subject interests me and the art inside actually excites me I’m not bothering, just because he’s got a crack idea I won’t be following him wherever, he used to be up there in terms of my loyalty that I knew if he wrote something I’d be up for it because generally he wouldn’t be able to disappoint. However even though he hates it, his best work is usually in the realm of superhero books. He writes them for adults and he writes them well. The nice thing is there are a few things that are pretty cool he’s doing apart from Marvel work. Here’s a pdf of the first 7 pages of his Ocean series from Wildstorm, which looks pretty sweet due to Chris Spouse that I’ll be checking out for sure, Ocean preview. Then there’s Stealth Tribes from Vertigo, I’ll go into more detail later on about this during my best of vertigo panel. He’s got a few more things coming out but I’ve seen no artwork for them, so I wouldn’t know what the deal is, including a series with JH Williams, of Promethea fame so that should be good as well.

So in the future I’ll be looking forward to from Warren ‘Make mine Marvel’:
Ultimate Fantastic Four
Ultimate Nightmare
and Iron Man !
So here are a few images I’ve liberated from cbr:

The article goes over this very briefly here: Warren and Adi on Iron Man. For those wanting to know who Adi is and what he can do, go and check out his website, Adi Granov’s portfolio

Mental note, make sure to sort out my ul, ol and li tags, and learn how to use that god damned exhibit plugin to sort out the images that get posted, also sort out a border that goes round these images would also be nice.

Man the more you get into this wordpress stuff the more you find out just how much stuff people have done for you, and all you need to know is how to make things sing a bit, needless to say I’m enjoying these minor tweaks here and there.

The control panel hasn’t exactly been what I envisioned for it simply because I didn’t know what I could do with it and actually make it useful. So hopefully this should give people a bit of a kick in terms of what is possible if you set your mind to it. Like the post says it’s version 0.1, which means once I can actually be bothered to give the CSS a bit of a creative punch future versions will materialise with more features and better graphic content. Go on click right here, to check it out.

I think with that I’ve cleaned up my index stuff, leaving the css file to clean up and finally start updating the nexus section of this site, which to be honest will be harder that I should think. I don’t want to hand code that, so I’m going to try and find a hack for wordpress that does what I want it to do.

Funny thing is I already have an alternative, it’s just not exactly what I’d like to do, so I’m going to hold back on this little thing till I’m absolutely certain there is no other way.

San Diego comic con is up and running and loads of news has been coming out hard and fast these past few hours, which is nice, because loads of people are waiting for this one moment to make a breakout and make some noise.

I’ve decided I’m only going to talk about the news that I actually think is interesting to me and that I think I’ll buy the work from those creators when it finally arrives on the shelves.

IDW Publishing - I really want to support these guys, but to be honest appart from 30 Days of Night, nothing is really grabbing me as that great from them. Fair enough I’d like to give Popbot a go, but it seems a bit too steep in price, and the other license comics seem a bit eh for me, nothing really grabs me like classic comics I’d like to read from them. I guess the only thing I’d try as well is Desperadoes from Marriott, however I haven’t tried the first two series, so when/if I get round to those comics I might check anything new coming out from them.

Get the news about the new ongoing series. Doesn’t really say if it’s going to be monthly or not, but I’ll pick it up after I pick up the trade for Return to Barrow. IDW - 30 Days of Night ongoing series announced

Oni press - There was a time I was such an oni press junkie. Now nothing they do actually means anything to me. I had a few books from them, where honestly it was just pretty poor, and their golden star really fell for me. Queen and Country became a bit too propaganda as Rucka decided to try and get all his political feelings out on paper and it showed. It wasn’t even done in a particularly decent way, my opinion, so I dropped buying the hardcovers, yes I have three hardcovers from this series, the third of which I never got through. This other romantic thing called Cheat, really felt like it was trying to have impact, which to me felt a bit hollow and as though the writer couldn’t be bothered to get on and finish the story, opting to try and be dramatic. Really didn’t work for me to be honest. It was well drawn and had good craft to it, but the story was abismal. So that was probably the last oni press book I’ve bought in a good long while.

So is there something that might get me back, only one guy really and he’s called J.Torres. He’s brilliant, everything he writes I really enjoy. Haven’t read anything by the man in a while, even though I should check out Jason and the Argobots, but I just haven’t seen it in front of me to go and plop down the cash for it. Titans Go! seems a bit not my thing to be honest, but Sidekicks is still one of my fav reads, absolutely love that book to death. So I’ll be checking this little series out for sure I think: Love is a foreign language

Dark Horse Comics - Well I really like most of what Dark Horse does. They’ve been pretty solid, publishing one of my favorite books in the entire world, Blade of the Immortal in case you were wondering; and a slew of other amazing series. So I’m always on the lookout for something new from the guys and gals from Oregeon. A few things have jumped out at me really:

Samurai: Heaven and Hell, by Ron Marz and Luke Ross, in December. A samurai’s true love has been kidnapped and he searches the world to find her. Well I loved The Path by Marz, so I’m pretty happy that we’re getting something that is in that vein without the restrictions that you would expect. So I’ll be waiting for a nice little trade on this little book here.

Hipira: The Little Vampire, by Katsuhiro Otomo and Shinji Kimura, in April. A vampire tries to find his way to Hell, which is like heaven for vampiresTwo words: Katushiro Otomo.

Here’s where you can find the original posts: Comics Continuum Coverage Part 1

Let’s hope some crazy stuff happens like last year.

Watched it last night. Very well put together littl documentary. Lots of food for thought. The thing is as with any media you’ll see it as biased propaganda, but the thing that it shows is how the western world has been subjected to the other side’s propaganda for so long, I think it’s healthy to have a look at the other side of the coin.

The problem is discarding the movie because that’s what you feel it is only. Micheal Moore shows all his sources, reveals where he got his information, which is bloody public knowledge. Anyone anywhere in the world can access most of that information if they really wanted to. If you’ve ever read Stupid White Men, you’ll know that Moore puts all his references in the back of the book, so if you think he’s lying, well go check it for yourself, because guess what, Moore’s done his homework.

For me none of it was particularly shocking as I’m Lebanese and therefore cynical about the motives of the American and British government and the whole fiasco that is the UN. I know it’s all about money, and a complete disregard for humanity, as long as you line your pockets. The whole war on terror, again another scheme that I could see right through, there was nothing there that was new to me.

To me I really couldn’t help but feel ready to cry when I saw the Iraqi woman talking about how her house was blown away, how he family was dispursed and how none of them were milititant but civils. I watched her and seeing as I was listening to her in arabic, even though she said a few words slightly differently, it was pretty much all understandable, she signified the way all arabs the world over feel about the current situation. The frustration in her voice was unbearable. I couldn’t help but think about how Lebanon was destroyed, and now it’s Iraq, and they tried to wrap it in a coat of lies and deceit; and nobody cared enough, all those ignorant assholes that would defend their country’s right to act, I’d like to grab them by the hair and show them these scenes of the little girl completely dismembered so that they can listen to Britney Spears and Kylie, while watching fucking shit TV, feeling all safe now that the terrorists are taken care of.

I was reminded while watching the war ‘or trying hard to avoid the propaganda but couldn’t’, just how much Iraqi lives, are obviously much cheaper than American or British lives, and that truely makes me sick.

You know however that this little movie will get people thinking and you know that it will eventually be followed by other people also willing to show what is being done in their name.

With this blog completed, I’ve decided upon and began my next project. It’s time really to buckle down hard and actually try and try and finish my script. The plan is to complete the script by the end of the year. In addition the sketches for the characters, and my general skills should be ready to handle the art side of the book next year sometime. The plan is I write no more than 1 page a day, unless of course I’ve got some really devine inspiration, although for well crafted pages I’d need to give them a day.

Once that page has been completed then I can start doing a few sketches until I finally get a decent amount of work underneath me. Things will have to be put on hold, much like I did when I was actually trying hard to complete this blog project.

For all those that are looking to try and write scripts I’ve got two places you should drop by and have a look at. The first place is this little section at the BBC website, writersroom, which should have all your template needs for word, which is brilliant to be honest, been looking for something like this for a while, so I’m glad it’s all set up for, and I just modify it slightly.

The second is scryptic studios, again a wealth of information and script samples.

Just updated the site with this very excellent little plugin, it’s a funky idea, in that I get to put any font I want as the main title bar and everyone can see it, which is nice. Information on this plugin can be found right here at Joel Bennet’s site, Huddled Masses.

I mean honestly if I hadn’t moved over to the supreme Wordpress I’d still be stuck with some pretty lackluster html pages, created in Moveable Type, without the absolute SHEER POWER of PHP. So the moral of the story is screw Moveable Type, get with the program, and free your blogging experience.

Update: I think I’ll probably update something every week till I get the final version sorted. I’ve got the control panel to give a bit of a touch up, and the CSS code needs to be cleaned, and of course I’ve got to begin sorting out my nexus section as well. Still a bit of work to go really, but hey it’s getting there, at least it’s fully functional at this moment in time.

I’ve been involved with graphic design and computers and software and programming for the better part of nearly three years now. I think in that time I’ve learnt a hell of a lot, and really expanded my skills in a great number of areas, which ultimately helped me no end at work as well. Having said that I’ve neglected a certain part of my creativity in my attempt to do other things. I’ve neglected my hand drawn art. The stuff that isn’t computer manipulated and drawning using freehand or expression or whatever, the bare basics of me, a sheet of white paper and a pencil. Simple equipment that given time and patience can produce magic in my ideas.

So I think I’m going to have to put a lot of the designing aspects on the backburner, maybe 2 hours a day on design maximum, and then spend the rest of the time on the business of artwork. I miss that feeling of a completed page that I can add in my pile like you wouldn’t believe, and I think it’s time I got that feeling back again.

This is the last thing I actually drew, some parts I’m proud of, others I do actually cringe at; I guess that’s what it means to be hypercritical of your own work really, and not accepting anything as the best, but rather always seeing room for improvement. The title will most definitely change, but for now, it’ll do just fine really.

Also this marks my 100th post for the year.

Man that was really painful actually. To eventually get this site and blog to where I wanted has taken more out of me than I care to admitt. It’s brilliant since it’s something I love, and will no doubt constantly tweak and fiddle with, as is always the case with most internet based projects I get involved with, but damn it’s been a long journey. Hours spent well in the end I think. Place can only get better from here on in.

So officially welcome to Makeshift Ver0.1 and chronicles Ver0.1 . Go on click at the top to find out more.

I will eventually put a plug to all the sites and people that helped me sort this thing out on the wordpress forums.

So why only 90% still you ask? Well about 3% can be attributed to the contact page and starting adding reviews to the nexus section, while the rest is cleaning up the index code and my css file, make it nice and sweet. I know kinda perfectionist and all but KODE IS POETRY as the Wordpress website proudly proclaims.

Update: Just completed all the static pages, and essentially my site, as a running version 0.1, I’ll be doing tweaks for ever but it’s cool to have the first step done and a running blog all sorted out.

I get into the tube station in Camden (london for those in the dark about my whereabouts), I get onto the platform, and to my right is a big pile of sick. I think to myself, ‘Don’t breathe any of the smells, just keep waking’ completely in my own world. All I care about it the fact that the tube isn’t there the second I get onto the platform, after all someone else will take care of that mess, right? Well my train arrives 2 minutes later, but as I’m looking down the platform at my train arriving, I see a black man walking up to the pile of sick with a mop. It’s not a major issue really I’m sure it happens regularly on a friday in the london underground, but I can guarantee it’s a black man 90% of the time cleaning up the gunk, and I think that’s truely awful. The truth of the matter is that, this is the harsh reality of the situation and I can’t help but feel a certain amount of sorrow and disgust.

Rich white girls take on the world, get wasted, puke on the train and everywhere and then the black man makes it right.

We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us.

And yet as far as I can see we exploit in more’ sociably acceptable’ manners. This point more than anything was hammered to me by a very smart and softly spoken guy at work. He said a line which just made me sit up and think about the society that I am currenly a part of.

The peasants work for the lords. He was saying this in direct reference to the actual land laws in England and this thing called ‘Leasehold’ and ‘Freehold’. All of Westminister is not owned by the people that claim that land. It’s owned by one man, and eventually that land will go back to him. Hell he’s even called Lord Westminister.

The peasants work for the lord. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Let’s see if this works. I’ve got 3 hours before I go to bed. I have one final area of this site I need to use that will finish it off in a capacity. Can I do it while dynamically updating this post to see if indeed I’m hitting my deadline.

I’ve go the below post that claims it will tell me how to make Static WP pages the easy way, shall we see hmm,…yes I think we shall. TechGnome’s World � Static WP Pages made easy

Update one: Got preoccupied and watched the end half of a documentary of the problems Shell are having. As for the site, well the makeshift are has been updated, although the CSS is not completely there, I’ll try and sort it out before I go bedy bies.

Update two: Pretty pathetic, I’m soo tired. I’ve managed to get the ‘static pages’ to work, which is a major load off my back to be honest, but they don’t have the look I want. Not sure which exact CSS I should be using for this little thing here, so I’ll have to wait till tomorrow, but to be honest that means that sometime during the weekend, my blog design and all is pretty much done, which is pretty scary, took what 1 month and a half to get here, but it’s been one hell of an adventure.

RSS: News Readers

rss feed aggregators are simple programs that store special links found on websites. The idea is that when a website is actually updated these programs are told this and kindly inform you that they have been updated and depending on the type of aggregator you get might and usually gives you a nice summary of what the update is about. If for example you’re subscribed to BBC then expect something new every 10 minutes.

You are the one that controls how often the feed is actually updated, or checks for new updates, so it could be every 10 minutes or every day. I still haven’t decided on the right type of aggregator for me yet.

I’ve been very busy at work, simply because I’ve been more heavily involved with the projects I’m working on. What this does it limits the amount of time I have to do other things, such as updating and completely this blog. It’s getting there I suppose, but still not 100%, I’m thinking it’s about 75% complete which isn’t too bad, since it has changed dramatically, very quickly, but no time for other things, such as learning Blender, and completing my script and the rest of my 25 images so that I can start iliosnare collective afresh. Oh well, patience is a virtue.

Been listening to Zero7 a lot lately, great mello electronica that should be bought by everyone that has a clue. Seriously it’s the best waking up music, since it’s just right on the nerves.

Go out and buy DIGIT I’m really thinking of getting a subsciption to the magazine, but I’m already there with Computer Arts, it’s just that CA has dropped in quailty like you wouldn’t believe and so I’m really not all that keen on the magazine anymore, DIGIT is much more classy as a design mag.